It’s no secret that Tesla has been working on an improved version of Autopilot for its cars. Elon Musk confirmed as much in November when he told a customer that an Enhanced Autopilot update should come out in mid-December. With the month almost over, the Tesla CEO said on Twitter that the update is still on track to be released this month.
“Looks like we might be ready to rollout most of Autopilot functionality for HW2 towards the end of next week,” Musk tweeted late on Thursday.
Looks like we might be ready to rollout most of Autopilot functionality for HW2 towards the end of next week
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 23, 2016
The Tesla boss also revealed on Twitter that Autopilot’s vision neural net is “working well,” but the system still needs to gather “a lot” of real-world data to go through validation.
Musk did mention that “most” of the features will be enabled, but not all of them. Electrek put together a list of the features that were available in Tesla cars with Autopilot 1 but not in Autopilot 2, as follows (the ones that are already enabled are crossed out):
- Auto windshield wipers
Auto low beam headlightsAuto high beam headlightsAuto-dimming touchscreen B instrument cluster- Parking assist
- Blind spot detection
- Forward collision warning
- Auto emergency braking
Side collision warning- Side collision avoidance
- Lane departure warning
Speed assist- Traffic-aware cruise control
- Autosteer
- Auto lane change
- Autopark
- Summon
It’s not clear which features will be enabled in the incoming update. Musk’s goal for Autopilot is to turn any Tesla car into a dependable self-driving vehicle, but it may take a while to see that actually happen. Musk thinks his goal could be achieved as soon as late 2017.
